


G is for Garden

by rohpsohpic



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Ambiguity, Botany, Drabble, Gardens & Gardening, Mystery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-10
Updated: 2019-04-10
Packaged: 2020-01-10 19:49:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18414686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rohpsohpic/pseuds/rohpsohpic
Summary: “Gar . . . gar . . . garden?” Chan asks, sounding the words out by the way the light falls on the illustrations in the children’s book. The English feels foreign on his tongue, new, and his body fights it like an invader. It tastes like heavy glass, the kind so thick that seeing anything through it is near hopeless. “Garden,” he says again, more confidently, because he has seen it before, this heavy glass that his parents lock up in fluted glasses and ornaments that feel almost too decadent to hold.They are sitting in the solarium, and there is glass everywhere, actually, letting the light in and leaking their microcosmic bubble of learning out. Jisoo smiles, the flip of the page coming in a gentle paean. The watercolor landscape that looks so much like his own garden disappears in the fold. “Good.”





	G is for Garden

“Gar . . . gar . . . garden?” Chan asks, sounding the words out by the way the light falls on the illustrations in the children’s book. The English feels foreign on his tongue, new, and his body fights it like an invader. It tastes like heavy glass, the kind so thick that seeing anything through it is near hopeless. “Garden,” he says again, more confidently, because he has seen it before, this heavy glass that his parents lock up in fluted glasses and ornaments that feel almost too decadent to hold.  
They are sitting in the solarium, and there is glass everywhere, actually, letting the light in and leaking their microcosmic bubble of learning out. Jisoo smiles, the flip of the page coming in a gentle paean. The watercolor landscape that looks so much like his own garden disappears in the fold. “Good.”

Gardens are portals to other worlds, or so Chan says. Jisoo says that gardens are other worlds, and Chan is inclined to believe him. In the sloping expanse of grass that cuts into the blue horizon, it makes no difference. Words are swallowed under the endless sky. Worlds are secondary to this sea, this unceasing deluge of little green sails that blend into one unfathomable fleet. When he is walking by himself, his thoughts are easily lost. One time, Jisoo finds him hidden in one of the dips, fingers knitted into the grass, books stacked into a monolith on the flattest square of space he could find, eyes cast upon it in vacant wonder. Jisoo always walks him back when he is lost.  
The next day, Jisoo buys a fountain pen. Chan watches him practice writing inscriptions into the books, elephantine lines that curve like the foothills he is so used to seeing. The urge to go outside is strong, and Chan vacillates like the pendulum in a grandfather clock that has been caught in someone’s hand. His own weight is begging him to go. Jisoo’s hand, so imponderous and sure, fascinates him. Roman letters roll out in strange disconnected streams. Milky pages find shape in fledgling ink. Chan watches Jisoo construct his own horizontal monoliths line by line. Jisoo never spares him a glance.  
The next day, Jisoo starts teaching him.  
“G-A-R . . .”

“—den,” says Chan, standing on tiptoe to feel for an oval leaf. It comes away in his hand, green and perfect. “See? Cherry.”  
“What kind?” asks Jisoo. He agrees to walk with Chan today in both directions, and Chan, unspeakably delighted with hosting the first guest on his regular walk, takes it upon himself to show him the ropes. For Chan, the ropes encompass every piece of flora on their invisible path.  
Chan knows the answer, and an unfought smile conquers his face. The leaf is raised proudly, the serrated edges like feathers on the callused pads of his fingers. His hands are tough. His heart is tender. “Yoshino.”  
“Latin name?” Jisoo quizzes.  
Chan knows this, too. He lowers the leaf, twirling it in front of his face to hide the flush of happiness that is lighting him up from the inside out. “Prunus x yedoensis. Hybrid cherry.”  
Jisoo does not nod. Chan sees a flash of light in his eyes and knows that he is pleased with his knowledge. In exchange for his knowledge is acknowledgment. “Perhaps you do know everything about the garden,” Jisoo allows. There is a coolness in Jisoo’s face. Chan’s happiness comes as simply and heatedly as fire. Jisoo is as unshakable as rain.

_Chan,_  
_An abecedarium is not an exotic plant._  
_Add it to your garden. Let it flourish._

There is a bedroom upstairs of which Chan is aware, with placid certainty, because it is where his parents tell him to go to bed at night. When he is up late in a time when there is such a thing as night, spread over thicker, heavier books with bygone words, words too thick and heavy to hold in his mind, his parents stop halfway on the stairs and whisper for him to go to bed upstairs. The stairs are a strange slope unlike the garden outside.  
Chan sleeps in the solarium. There is light in the solarium. There is a bay window that is perfect for him to curl up in. There is Jisoo, who mills around straightening things and gliding his fingers across the invisible pages that fabricate the universe. Jisoo says that so many things are invisible. Chan finds it hard to think of something beyond his vision. Most of the time, Jisoo sleeps first. Sometimes, Jisoo soothes him to sleep, smoothing his hair and sitting with his precious fountain pen to dance across books as he waits, grounding Chan with tangibility. Sometimes, he wakes up with a blanket around him.

There is furniture in the solarium. Chan is not interested in furniture. Jisoo is.  
One time, Chan catches Jisoo beholding a grand wooden beast, a clock that is almost their height. Ornate arrows create a moving landscape that captures his attention. There are letters on its face, and Chan wants desperately to read them. Chan does not say it. “What’s that?”  
“A grandfather clock,” says Jisoo. He is almost completely still in the way that Jisoo can be, calm and unhurried.  
Chan watches the lines rotate, traveling in circles that only bring them to where they are. This is a dance in itself, a spin that spans the uncountable ballrooms of its stoic wooden face. Chan’s eyes can only follow, entranced. “Where are they going?”  
“Everywhere,” says Jisoo. “Nowhere,” says Jisoo.  
It sounds complicated, going everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Chan ponders it for many rotations. They stand in relation only to each other, watching the beast turn.

“How . . . am . . . I . . . doing?”  
“Good,” Jisoo smiles. Like wings, the pages of the book fold up briefly as Jisoo leans over to run a thumb along Chan’s hand. He says it again, sincere, and it is the only thing necessary for Chan’s hope to take flight. “You’re doing good.”

**Author's Note:**

> We need some Lee Chan appreciation.


End file.
